How to get everything done without running yourself into the ground

These days the scarcest product of all is time. It seems there is plenty of it, yet there is never enough. Especially for someone running a business who does not yet have a large team. 

An entrepreneur, a freelancer, a business owner — these are people with an active attitude who organise their own working process and deal with both the work itself and the organisational questions around it. 

They often face the question of how to get everything done that they planned without burning out while lighting the way for others. What does the day of an entrepreneur, a business owner or a site owner look like (add what is missing, cross out what is not needed)? Everyone is different, of course. But there is a lot in common.

In the morning, go through the mail and customer tickets (check the traffic, the orders, the messages, whether the goods are in stock), deal with the churn — the small questions that have to be settled here and now, remember to eat / forget to eat, drive to the tax office or to a meeting. 

Come back, take up the long-postponed but badly needed piece of work, lose track of time and fall asleep at two or three in the morning. And there is still a mass of fresh information that keeps being updated and has to be kept up with: news in your field, news from suppliers, articles… Sound familiar?

The modern pace of life demands that information be absorbed quickly, and there are only 24 hours in a day for all of it.

And if you do not slow down a little from time to time, burnout follows. Not at once and not severe, but very unpleasant. Apathy that keeps you from doing anything and does not let a fresh thought into your head. Here is some advice that will make the day easier and more productive:

1. Delegate to the team — to employees, assistants, the people close to you who are ready to help. Give them tasks and explain clearly what you would like to see at the end. Try not to worry about how the task is carried out, and take less part in it.
2. Use specialists. Say you have an online toy shop. And for that shop's site to work properly you need to scale the project or audit the server to see whether it is configured optimally for the project's tasks.
   Trying to work all that out yourself, you will lose time — which is money. The best option is to hand that task to server administrationspecialists.
3. Break large tasks into parts. If you need, say, to build a base of suppliers, do not plan to get it all done in one day. Say, today we look at the prices and note down the best ones. We put the list aside and deal with other things. Tomorrow we go through the list again and cross out the ones who are inconvenient logistically. Such an approach lets you settle matters without harming other tasks, and also digest the information you have and take a better considered decision.
4. Use calendars, boards and lists — the things that keep the important data in front of your eyes so that nothing slips away.
5. Choose a pace of work that is comfortable for you. You can of course argue that the early bird catches the worm, but if you are phlegmatic by nature and find it easier to work through each task calmly, do not try to work like a choleric — you will wear yourself out very quickly. And the result will not be good.
6. Get enough sleep! The energy that a proper night's sleep gives more than makes up for the time "lost" to sleeping. Yes, there is still this to do, and that, and that other thing… but no. Feeling well requires enough sleep. By taking hours of sleep away from ourselves we turn ourselves into a finished tube of toothpaste. There is still a little in there, you can squeeze it out.

The most wonderful thing about having your own business is the feeling of freedom. But that freedom carries great responsibility, and the process itself takes an enormous amount of energy. So optimising your work matters a great deal, both for the result and for how you feel. 

Listen to yourself and to our advice, and you will manage!